I can’t wait ’til Friday. I don’t see pets as a necessity for people in financial trouble!

I’m having a hard time with my parents and judging them about money… Mostly my mom, but my dad doesn’t do much to help control the finances.

I liked an idea I read recently (on this web page?) that gave the idea of making a person buy back their items to find out what’s most important to them.

Hell, I’m nowhere near being in trouble financially but I use a very simple prepaid phone (on NET10) and it costs me $20 a month. Nothing fancy but it gets the job done and the service is actually quite good.
Michael is really not ready to make any kind of sacrifice to get back on his feet…

As a total side-note, the bits about the half paper towel you used for a few days and your neighbour wanting to eat part of a moldy orange are borderline vomit inducing. You’re a reasonable guy, you should not feel the least bit guilty about this (except maybe for repeatedly using a slimy, dirty paper towel). Truly sickening.

I can’t get past tearing a paper towel in half for personal use. Was it one of those brands that gives you the option of tearing off half for the sake of efficiency? If so, were you actually using a quarter of the paper towel? That doesn’t seem frugal. It seems cheap.

Still….I REALLY can’t get past using that same half-of-paper-towel (that actually could have been a quarter of the paper towel) until it becomes gross and grimy.

Maybe you can share your neighbor’s identity with us so that we never eat at his home should any of us have the misfortune of meeting him, befriending him, and being invited to dinner.

The scenario you described would have made me jump off the boat and swim back to shore.

It’s a beautiful post, by the way. Both of your friends appear to live at extremes while you come across as well-balanced. My opinion is that THEY have a lot to learn from YOU – except for the bit about the dogs…

1. As a pet owner I can say that getting rid of the dogs is not an option because pets are a part of your family. Asking to get rid of dogs is like saying getting rid of a child or sibling. I know this sounds crazy but many pet owners will agree.

2. Why do you not like RIch Dad Poor Dad? I would really like to hear your side because I really liked the book.

i get super frustrated when people post that they can’t feed their kids or pay their bills, but won’t cut off karate lessons or cable. after one suggestion, maybe two, i leave them alone and won’t respond to their posts anymore.

I never judged her because it took me a long time to realize how her own decisions had contributed to some of her difficulties. For instance, I didn’t recognize her poor choice of a husband because they were already engaged when I met them. Years later when the marriage broke up, she had every opportunity to sell the marital home, and she should have. Instead she tried to keep it, and eventually lost it to foreclosure.

Not judging was undoubtedly easier for me because I ended up moving away before her marriage really hit the rocks. Nothing I or anyone else could say would have mattered anyway. This couple got themselves into a huge financial and emotional mess that no one else could get them out of. We lost touch over a year ago, probably for good.

I think JD is doing the latter. The sad truth is that Michael is immature, lazy, and foolish. Here’s the breakdown.

1. IMMATURE– because he can’t manage delayed gratification. Last summer, I wanted an IPhone, too. So did my pregnant wife. But we had just bought a bigger house and had yet to sell our condo, and were living as “low on the hog” as we could go. In early November, we sold the condo.

I bought my wife an IPhone because she was getting less mobile and had trouble getting upstairs to use the computer. Not knowing what type of baby delivery expenses we would have, I kept my older phone, which I bought refurbished from AT&T in 2007 for a while longer. After we paid off the hospital bills, I bought an IPhone- in March 2010.

This type of thinking is anathema to Michael, but is a core building block of creating and keeping wealth, or at least a modest emergency fund.

2. LAZY– When JD found Michael a $500 rental, he should have been thrilled. When he found out it did not fit his family’s requirements, an even moderately industrious person would either ask JD how they found the $500 place and ask for help in learning to search for other low-cost places, or ask JD directly to keep searching for him. Michael just went out and found whatever fit his requirements, none of which were financial. Surely in all of PDX there is SOME rental in the city that can accommodate his family and dogs that is less than $1300/month. But he didn’t want to do the legwork to find that place.

3. FOOLISH- at $1300 month rent and $180 in cell phones, he has established a base burn rate of money at $17,760 per year without touching electricity, water, the digital cable package that Michael will probably order, gasoline/transit passes and oh yeah, FOOD. The median family income (usually a two-income household with married adults) in PDX is about $50k according to Wikipedia. Did the guy who just moved to town with no job pick up that type of salary on his own? I doubt it. So let’s say he’s making a little over half that at $30k.

Coming out of bankruptcy, with $12000 and change left BEFORE taxes to take care of his family this year, with only shelter and phone service covered otherwise?

The real potential problem is three to six months down the road. If his monthly cash flow is already underwater as he starts the new job, things are only going to get worse later on.

I’m sorry if this sounds harsh but this type of behavior has cascading consequences for family, and Michael’s immediate and extended family are probably already suffering from it. I’ve seen my father-in-law do too many similar things to waste money.

He’s twice my age, has worked as a lawyer for 30 years, and has no retirement savings, but he did take a transatlantic luxury cruise a few years back and is vacatoining in Texas this week.

Half of my financial life is worrying about what happens if he gets seriously ill before he is eligible for Medicare. I fear that they will need to sell their house to pay bills, and they will come to us for money to live on. We are savers but the only way for us to do this is to basically raid our own retirement funds.

So is JD judging Michael? No. There are real and visceral consequences lurking for Michael’s wife, sons, and any other family members who will be asked to forego their dreams (or perhaps already have) to save his wasteful behind at some point.

So Michael, if you’re reading, it’s time to man up.

1. Keep your dogs, but go find shelter for somewhere under $800/month. Better yet, find that shelter somewhere along a bus or a train route that gets you to your job easily, and save money on both transport and housing.

2. The IPhones go back. ASAP. Go hit an AT&T store and tell them you thought you could afford them, but can’t, and ask how you can return them and replace them with the most basic but functional cellphones they offer. Then drop the data plans and get a monthly family plan that is far less expensive.

The Millionaire Next Door was offering unsolicited advice and nobody wants that, really. Michael came asking for it and still ignored it. No wonder JD felt uncomfortable…he felt manipulated and foolish for even wasting his time with Michael.

I have always been frugal in my spending ,handling debt (STAY AWAY!)and have looked clearly at options before I invest. I am 38 and have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in boring index funds, bought my home in Florida in 2004 and am not near underwater, have my kids college prepaid, emergency fund fully funded and my marriage, and family life are awsome to go with this- go figure!

Am I bragging? Mabey, or mabey I am just telling it like it is, just like all those d-bags, WHO MESSED UP FINANCIALLY, whom I have seen and heard over the past 20 years. One uppers who bought or leased better, newer cars and bigger houses than I had. People who bragged about their internet stock,that hadn’t made a dime yet, that doubled in a week. People who said mortgage debt is OK, especially if you do a 2nd on your home too buy another house to flip! People who like Credit cards for the miles. People who wouldn’t lower themselves to use a coupon, buy something used, buy a boring index fund or hold off on buying every cool electronic gadget just to ask me how I can live my life is without it. I say “I don’t know, I just do not need to tell 439 phony facebook friends, what kind of doughnut I just bought just then on my Iphone”.

All of these people made and lost alot of money over the years, but most of them are not making money now, they are making excuses. It is not my fault, it is the bank’s, credit card company’s, car dealer’s, realtor’s, stock broker’s, wall street’s, subprime lender’s, George Bush’s, rich people’s, my boss’s, my customer’s, the economy’s, China’s, health insurance company’s, or my spouse’s (did miss any?). It is any or all of these reasons that made them fail. Not them being one-uping, know it all d-bags for the last 20 years.

THE ONLY WAY TO GROW FROM THESE THINGS -FORCLOSURE, SHORT SELLING, DEFAULTING, BANKRUPT, REPO, NO MONEY TO FALL BACK ON, ETC. IS TO SAY ” YES I MESSED UP, I AM SCARED, BUT I AM FROM NOW ON GOING TO STAY WITHIN MY MEANS, LOOK AT RISK IN MY INVESTMENTS, WORK HARD, SAVE, AND FORM REAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE IN MY LIFE AND WILL BE OK IN THE LONG RUN….Oh and not be a one upping D-BAg!
Alot won’t change and will go back to finding the next best thing to delve into. If it makes a dime you will hear about it. Just hope they do not involve you in the deal. Those people – No sympathy!

First off, each member of a society has a moral imperative to call others on “bad” behavior. Yes, our individual value systems will determine what is bad. Howevere, in my book, silence often is received as tacit approval. When I see someone belittling a child in public, I will call them on that behavior — polietly and with compassion.

That said, what struck me the most about this article is that Michael’s bad decisions affect not only himself, but his whole family. And even if he changed completely today, his past bad decisions are going to continue to affect his whole family for several years.

As a previous poster stated, Michael’s right to be an idiot and irresponsible stops the moment those decisions begin to affect others.

In this particular situation, I don’t believe JD went far enough. Ethically, since JD cares about Michael and his family, I think JD needed to bite the bullet and state some hard truths to his friend, even at the risk of alienating Michael. Hard truths can be relayed with compassion. But Michael needs someone in his face on this — and ultimately, Michael will be more receptive to hard truths from someone he views as a good friend than say the guy who refuses his car loan (or rental contract).

The comparison to an addict is very close. Funny how we never want to judge others about money. However, if Michael were gambling away hugh amounts of money every week, I’d bet JD would be far more likely to offer to get him to counseling, etc. and risk the loss of the friendship.

Just for the record, I’m a recovering alcoholic myself and do not buy into the predominent mentality that it is “beyond my control”. It wasn’t until my family stepped up and said either enter treatment or never call us again that I was finally able to recognize my own drinking as definitly a problem that needed to change. Without this “in your face” intervention, I probably would have continued to abuse my body and my finances for several more years before hitting bottom. Because of my family, hopefully I never will hit bottom.

Michael needs to stop the spending and live within his means. If JD feels love for him and his family, he needs to call Michael on his behaviors. More than subtle suggestions are necessary here.

Just my own little judgment and two cents.

You’ve hit one of my pet peeves of people who are ignorant about a topic trying to push a political agenda “as an aside.” I strongly recommend reading the textbook “Public Finance and Public Policy” by Jonathan Gruber as a primer. It’s at a college undergraduate level and should be readable.

You are right that just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean people don’t believe it, but by stating it as a throwaway aside as if it is so true it doesn’t require any explanation or qualification doesn’t help the matter– it just spreads untruths.

Now back on topic to complaining about people throwing away their pets.

My three kids owe me a total of just over $7200. My life was constant stress and worry over their finances. I offered budgeting services, intermediary bank account services, to pay for counseling, bought them books, emailed them articles (some from GRS), etc. I engaged in bribery, pleading, yelling, ignoring, judging, mean-ness, sarcasm, and general bad behavior.

We have family game-nights a few times a year. My entire night would be ruined when one of my kids would mention something about buying their friend an expensive birthday gift. Telling me about driving to another state for dinner with their friends and buying $8 shots was sure to invoke a response.

Finally, I said no. NO! I told them the bank was closed and I would be loaning no more money. No deals, no bargains, no pleading, no negotiations, just no money. I said if I “CHOSE” to I would give them money, picking up the tab for lunch for example, but no more loans.

It was difficult to make that step, but I am much happier for it. I have a distance from the situation which reduces the stress and anxiety. Now, if they mention their poor spending habits, my DW and I look at each other and roll our eyes.

I still offer budgeting services and advice to them on a regular basis. Perhaps two or three times a year. Other than that, I’ll wait for them to ask.

One of the posters used a mountain analogy, with Michael at the bottom, JD in the middle and some guy on the top of the mountain in a lioncloth! I am somewhere between Michael and JD. While I do well with my finances, I am prone to the occasional spending spree. My wife and I have a mortgage and one car payment, I have one student loan. We have a LARGE emergency fund and pay off credit cards in full each month.

Maybe consider why you feel a need to judge.

It sounds like Michael might need compassion and prayer. Enabling will not help. It sounds like Michael is not interested in the help you are offering anyway.

Each person has their own path and is responsible for themselves. Live and let live.

A good resource for people who struggle with debt and money issues is Debtor’s Anonymous. http://www.debtorsanonymous.org/ But it’s only for people who want to change.

Most people don’t appreciate criticism, no matter how well earned. And it really stinks when the people in question are close friends. So just give him good advice and hope things work out for him.

And all you people dumping on the neighbor, work hard, save up for retirement and THEN show the world how it’s done. In the meantime shut up let the guy be however he wants to be. He’s earned it, and you haven’t.

There I go, judging …

Just this week my daughter and her bf rented an inexpensive, incredibly tiny studio+ apartment in a very good area where they hope to find work. They have asked me to help them move there stuff so I did what any rational person would do and told them when I thought they should leave behind, due to space and financal considerations. But they insist they take the large entertainment unit with a giant CRT television,and tons of video game equipment, and a new speakers system purchased with graduation money … and they are currently shopping for two computer desks to hold their desktop and laptop for the required two seperate work areas. When I point out that there is physically no room and rationally no reason to have all that with them right now they don’t want to hear it. Somehow, they will live amidst the electonics and find a way to pay for it all dispite the fact that neither one has a job yet, and find a way to plug it all in even though there are only 2 outlets in the room.

I’ve decided to let other family members take the actual trip with them and their stuff because I already know it’s going to be a disaster and I don’t want to subject myself to the frustrations.

Socialized health care in its purest form doesn’t HAVE premiums. Therefore there wouldn’t be people “willing to pay more” because no individual pays more, that’s part of the point. Nor was I saying the argument was right or wrong, merely that it exists and the logic behind it. And the logic is sound because, right or wrong, that is the argument used by many politicians as they pass laws to restrict food choices etc. Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean people don’t believe it. And just because you contradicted it doesn’t mean you’re right either, but that’s beside the point. While what you said is interesting I don’t care enough to dig it up myself. It doesn’t advise my philosophy since my philosophy is far too libertarian to be effected either way.

@Kate

There was no contradiction. My point about socialized health care was that the argument of shared cost is used to restrict choices and attempt to make people make better choices. As things stand right now JD, not his tax paying neighbors, bears the costs of his own health decisions and therefore doesn’t burden others with the consequences of his choices. It is analogous to the difference between Michael making bad choices (according to JD) and filing bankruptcy out from his debt and JD making bad choices (according to John) but being able to pay the costs out of his own bank account. One is autonomous and I think should be able to make as many *bad* choices as he can pay for. And the other is turning the expense over for others to absorb which I think opens him to condemnation in a way JD is not.

By not paying the consequences himself I think Michael has opened HIMSELF to judgment. Just like I think a parent who pays for college can demand specific behavior and grades from their adult child. The person(s) bearing the cost earn the right to judge the behavior. Michael turned over responsibility for his debt to the ether of bankruptcy court. Morally I think that’s all of us. He converted his finances from a private issue to a public one.

As far as judgment, I think it’s best to stay within your own boundaries. You can say, “I wouldn’t make the choices you’re making, and I can’t continue to put resources into helping you if you’re making choices so different from mine.” etc.

“What about getting rid of the dogs?” you know JD people look at their dogs as children.

I would never pay more money for dogs to be comfortable when I’m in a crisis mold.

By the spouse and kids having new gadgets I doubt if they even notice a financial crisis.

Nothing seems expensive on credit
-Czech proverb